2007 Scion Tc Spec Coupe 2-door 2.4l on 2040-cars

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Scion was slain by Toyota, not the Great Recession

Scion didn't have to go down like this. Through the magic of hindsight and hubris, it's easier to see what went wrong. And what might have been. What the industry should understand is this: Scion wasn't a losing proposition from the get-go. Its death is due to negligence and apathy. This is more than just the failure of a sub-brand. It's the failure of a company to deliver new and compelling products over an extended period of time. Toyota will point to the Great Recession as the reason it hedged its bets and withdrew funding for new vehicles, instead of using that as an opportunity to redouble efforts. This was as good as a death warrant, although myopically no one realized it at the time. Sadly, GM's Saturn experiment was a road map for this exact form of failure. No one at Toyota seemed to think the Saturn experience was worth protecting their experimental brand from. Or they weren't heard. Brands live and die on product. Somehow, Scion convinced itself that its real success metric was a youthful demographic of buyers. It seems like this was used to gauge the overall health of the brand. Look at the aging and uncompetitive tC, which Scion proudly noted had a 29-year-old average buyer. That fails to take into account its lack of curb appeal and flagging sales. Who cares if the declining number of people buying your cars are younger? Toyota is going to kill the tC thirteen years [And two indifferent generations ... - Ed.] after it was introduced. In that time, Honda has come out with three entirely new generations of the Civic. Scion wasn't a losing proposition from the get-go. Its death is due to negligence and apathy. At launch, the brand could have gone a few different ways. The xB was plucky, interesting, and useful – a tough mix of ephemeral characteristics – but the xA didn't offer much except a thin veneer of self-consciously applied attitude. That's ok; it was cute. Enter the tC, which managed to combine sporty pretensions with decent cost. It took on the Civic Coupe in the contest for coolness, and usually managed to win. More importantly, an explicit brand value early on was a desire to avoid second generations of any of its models, promising a continually evolving and fresh lineup. At this point, the road splits. Down one lane lies the Scion that could have been. After a short but reasonable product lifecycle, it would have renewed the entire lineup.

Scion FR-S may be getting supercharger kit from TRD

The Scion FR-S was just named the Hottest Sport Compact at the 2012 SEMA Show, and Toyota Racing Development (TRD) is apparently looking to make this car a little hotter. According to Car and Driver, TRD is close to coming up with a supercharger to fit to the car's 2.0-liter flat-four engine in order to squeeze out a little more performance. Currently, the FR-S produces 200 horsepower, but there's no guessing how much a supercharger could improve this figure.
With Subaru seemingly hard at work on a new turbo engine for the BRZ and even possibly a BRZ STI model, it is only logical for a force-fed FR-S to be in the works as well. Surprisingly, though, the report says that supercharger would be unique to the FR-S, but since the Scion and Subaru BRZ are mechanically identical, it isn't clear how this would be accomplished. TRD already offers plenty of upgrades for the FR-S such as exhaust, brake and suspension kits, and it offers a handful of superchargers for other models including the 5.7-liter V8 used in the Toyota Tundra and the 4.0-liter V6 used in the Tacoma.

Buy a Toyota GT86 and your wife will hate you

Marketing can be a very strange business. Convincing a man or woman (or child, really) that they absolutely cannot live without the latest, greatest new bit of technology oftentimes takes a unique approach. In the "online film promoting the Toyota GT86" you'll see below, created by agency Happiness Brussels, men are reverse-psychologied into thinking a new sports coupe will make them more masculine by getting their loved ones to hate them. Or something like that. We think.
In any case, we suggest you watch the video below to see how much fun men can have with a GT86 - or Scion FR-S or Subaru BRZ, presumably - at the expense of their significant others. Fair warning: There's a potential Not Safe For Work moment in the ad: beware of a brief male butt shot about 44 seconds in.
Marketing. Gotta love it. Unless you're married to a man. Or something like that. We think. Whatever, just watch.